Battle Lines
by Cyber 14
Summary: Battle lines are drawn across this town. Songfic to False Flags by Massive Attack.


This is a songfic to Massive Attack's excellent song "False Flags" I originally wrote it as a writing exercise on descriptive scenes. It turned out well, in my opinion, so I thought I'd post it. Well, here it is. Enjoy.

Just to note: a personal transport is basically a modern car, from what I understand from the novels, particularly the "Ravenor" novels. Excellent books for Fluffologists such as myself.

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In city shoes   
Of clueless blues  
Pays the views  
And no-mans news  
Blades will fade from blood to sport  
The heroin's cut these fuses short   
Smokers rode a colonial pig  
Drink and frame this pain I think   
I'm melting silver poles my dear  
You bleed your wings and then disappear

They are on the ground.

Rockets whizz over the guardsmen's' heads, incandescent balls of liquid fire in the darkness, what little light is present glinting off of their hulls like ceremonial trumpets, sounding not to signal the arrival of some important dignitary, but the arrival of a quick, horrific, and imminent death. The squad breaks and the men run for cover, madly scrambling like children, like cockroaches scurrying for shelter as a light is turned on. The rockets impact several hundred meters from the concealed men. A shockwave washes over them, a force so strong that many of them are knocked over. A shockwave so fearsome, that it feels as though the whole planet has torn itself apart in a single, violent, self destructive moment. Slowly, apprehensively, the guardsmen come out of cover and move on down the block.

The moving scenes and pilot lights  
Smithereens have got 'em scaling heights  
Modern times come talk me down  
And battle lines are drawn across this town  
Parisian boys without your names  
Ghetto stones instead of chains  
Talk 'em down cause it's up in flames  
And nothing's changed  
Parisian boys without your names  
Riot like 1968 again   
The days of rage yeah nothing's changed  
More pretty flames

They meet the enemy face to face at last, entrenched behind a makeshift barrier of burnt out personal transports. Las and auto fire laces through the air, like miniature knives in the darkness, slicing the air as though in the hands of a butcher. Zipping through the darkness like deadly, shining, parasites, eager to locate a host to feed upon. Each soldier knows that sooner or later, one of those barbs of light or slugs of metal will find him, will tear, quickly and painfully, into his flesh like a hungry carnivore, eager for a warm meal. They pray that it is _later_ rather then _sooner_.

In school I would just bite my tongue  
And now your words they strike me down  
The flags are false and they contradict  
They point and click which wounds to lick  
On avenues this Christian breeze  
Turns its heart to more needles please  
Our eyes roll back and we beg for more  
It frays this skin and then underscore  
The case for war you spin and bleed  
The sales you feel screensavers feed  
The girls you breed the soaps that you write  
The graceless charm of your gutter snipes  
The moving scenes and suburbanites  
And smithereens got 'em scaling heights 

Dawn is fast approaching, or it could just be the light from the hundreds of fires burning throughout the city. They burn continuously and without stopping, as more and more of this once proud city is reduced to crumbling ruins and slowly drifting ash. Still the squad moves ever foreword, ceaselessly continuing through this dark, hellish maze of death. A mortar screams overhead and impacts the second story of a bakery to their left. Masonry and metal are pulverized instantly and rain down on the soldiers, like a cruel imitation of life-giving rain. No, only life-_taking_ rain ever falls here.

Still, the guardsmen press on. They encounter fierce firefights, where every second you live is a second earned, and a second you might not get again. They encounter artillery barrages, shaking the earth and pulverizing everything in its path like the feet of a great, roaming giant. They encounter obstacles so overwhelming that it seems as if they will never make it through, as if it is their predetermined fate to die there, doing the impossible.

Still, they press on.

It's just what they do.

Modern times come talk me down  
The battle lines are drawn across this town  
English boys without your names  
Ghetto stones instead of chains  
Hearts and minds and US planes  
Nothing's changed  
And English boys without your names  
Riot like the 1980's again  
The days of rage yeah nothing's changed  
More pretty flames

Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.

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Well, what do you think? Short, I know. I may add to it in the future.

R&R PLZ. I would love to hear what you think.


End file.
